Epic Dragon Escapade
by
, 01-27-2021 at 06:39 AM (465 Views)
Monday Night, 1/25/21
I was basically Sam Winchester from Supernatural. I was returning from a mission with a group of fellow hunters where we'd had to translate between various languages. I walked up to a linguist guy and asked, "Do we ever translate messages from the 21st language over the phone?" (I had knowledge from the dream the the 21st and "final" language was demonic and therefore forbidden, with few people who could translate it, but we needed it nonetheless.)
"Yes, we have to sometimes." The linguist told me.
"Right." I realized our plans and knowledge were probably being constantly intercepted, which would explain a lot about our recent troubles. I quickly cooked up a scheme. "Alright, we're going to steal the book from the source so we don't have to pass information over the phones anymore. Come on." I grabbed the linguist by the arm and led him down a corridor. The section of floor we were standing on was actually an elevator, which transported us rapidly below ground.
"Wait, where exactly are we going?" The linguist asked with great confusion.
"Just popping over to hell real quick. Don't worry, I do it all the time."
"What!" The elevator reached the bottom and opened up into a series of corridors. "I didn't sign up for this..." The linguist complained but I shushed him. The place looked more like the version from Charmed than Supernatural. I scurried down a corridor, apparently knowing my way around very well, and the linguist trailed reluctantly behind me. I came to what looked like a dead end. I put my hand on the wall and it opened to the central chamber with the book. Unexpectedly, the room was packed full of bad guys, as they were in the middle of a major ritual. Oops. I ran back down the corridors pushing the poor linguist back in the other direction.
We made it back to the elevator, which took us back to ground level. "Split up!" I told the linguist, "They'll recognize me but they haven't seen you yet." I ran off to the left while he ran right. I made my way down a long hallway and then went outside. Now I could see that we'd been inside a large, black castle. The kind you'd expect villains to live in, with intimidating Gothic arches and lots of spires.
I morphed into a young boy and clambered over the rocks surrounding the castle. In front of me was the sea, stretching out into the foggy horizon. I found myself climbing on the Statue of Liberty... or perhaps a replica of it, since it wasn't to scale. It looked like it had seen better days but it was more or less intact. I worried that I would be seen and hoped the bad guys couldn't look everywhere at once. I scaled down to the base of the statue, where I discovered that mermaids were carved into the green stone. They looked like they were just part of the statue but I knew from my dream memories that they were real. "Hey, remember me from years ago?" I asked one of the mermaids. No response. They appeared to be sleeping. Good. I recalled a group of allies warning me that when these mermaids smelled blood in or near the water, they could attack viciously. Is there any blood around here? I wondered nervously. It was late in the evening and I was crouching on the shady side of the statue, right next to the water and a sleeping mermaid. I couldn't see very clearly. I pulled out my phone, looking for the flashlight app. It took a while to turn it on since droplets of water kept getting on the screen. I was eventually able to confirm that there was no blood, however.
Relieved, I turned the light off and looked back out toward the sea, wondering about my next move. My phone morphed into a wizard's wand. Maybe I could use the flying spell? How's that work again? Then I recalled an in-dream memory of my "magic mentor" laughing and saying, "The so called flying spell is completely useless! It's a joke, really. If you want to fly, what you really need is a dragon." Oh, right. But where would I get a dragon? I happened to know that the bad guys had stolen all the dragons in the country and were keeping them locked up deep underground. However, there is one dragon I could get to. I looked back to the castle and craned my neck to see a large black dragon chained to the highest spire of the castle. This was, apparently, the personal dragon of the head bad guy, aka "the Night King". That is, he was magically bonded with the dragon, allowing him to command it.
At some point I morphed again to resemble my waking self. Somehow I managed to scale all the way up to where the dragon was located. I crept around to the side of the dragon at first, trying not to be noticed by it just yet so I wouldn't get fried. "What are you doing here?" The dragon asked telepathically.
"Getting you out of here." I said quietly and unhooked the chain around its neck. The dragon grunted in response, seeming disinterested. Dream logic said I would have to ride the dragon (without a saddle I might add) and that the only way to accomplish this, since I wasn't bonded with it, was to command it to fly first and then jump onto its back while it was in mid air. "Vlar!" I shouted, and the dragon spread its wings and launched itself into the air. I flung myself from the spire, flailing wildly in midair for a while before just barely landing on the dragon. This seemed to destabilize it for a few moments, but I hoped that as a relatively smaller woman the dragon would have an easier time carrying me than the Night King. Sure enough, the dragon's flight smoothed out soon after.
We were traveling in the opposite direction of the sea. I only had minimal steering control of the dragon, who informed me his name was Rijik. He was flying close to the ground and we were narrowly missing obstacles. I hope he accounts for the trees that could knock me off. I thought.
"Trees can't hurt us at the speed we're going!" Rijik replied, "They're like bugs in the wind."
Easy for you to say. You've got armored scales. And you're a dragon.
Rijik laughed but flew a little higher. "It's these pillars you should be more worried about." Sure enough, we narrowly avoided a series of tall, white pillars. By this point I suspected the dragon was purposefully messing with me. "Doesn't it feel liberating to have that castle so far behind you, a tiny speck in the distance?"
I glanced back at the castle. It did look a bit smaller, but we'd only escaped about 30 seconds ago and it seemed a little soon to be celebrating already. I would like for it to be much further behind us and much tinier looking.
After traveling a while in silence, I was about to suggest we fly up as high as possible, enough to get some cloud cover so we wouldn't be seen by any potential pursuers. However, I noticed a strange looking tree out in the middle of an otherwise empty field. It was dead and it had strange branches that curved out and then straight upwards like many fingers reaching towards the sky. In the center of this circle of branches was a big hollow with stuff piled inside it. "That's the Knob Tree." Rijik said.
"The what? Uh, that sounds kind of..."
"What?"
"Never mind."
"It's called that because of all the doorknobs."
"Oh right. Of course." Upon closer inspection I could see that the stuff inside the tree was, indeed, a pile of many doorknobs.
Up ahead, there was a gigantic palace in ruins. It looked as though it had been sliced vertically in half such that all the interior rooms were exposed, on every floor. Despite its condition, it loomed over us and gave me an uneasy feeling. It must have been nearly twice as tall as the black castle we had fled. It was built upon a mountain of rock, which functioned like a wall that even the dragon would have a hard time clearing.
A narration began, describing an event that had occurred long ago. Decades ago? Centuries? The Narrator said that the palace had been inhabited by an evil ruler. One man had, little by little, betrayed his own people in an attempt to appease this ruler. Each time, the man had a chance to redeem himself by recognizing how far he'd strayed from his moral compass, but each time he only sank deeper into self delusion. Finally, the man "fell beyond saving" (presumably in a spiritual or moral sense), and his last betrayal led to horrific atrocities. All the remaining people banded together and ultimately sacrificed themselves in order to ensure the evil could not persist any longer. They broke down every door to every room and placed the doorknobs of each door of the palace into the tree. I glanced back at the dead tree in the field and saw a sort of time lapse animation of the tree's hollow going from being empty to being piled high with so many doorknobs that they fell to the ground around it.
By this point Rijik had to fly almost vertically upward because we were so close to the palace. I got a closer look at what was inside the faded and crumbling interior. I was horrified to see that each room contained one or more pictures of smiling children, some so many that they were stacked on top of each other. Sometimes there was a photo of a parent next to them. In a few places there were cubbies containing small caskets. I realized the whole place was like a cross between a war museum and a mausoleum. I could see debris, leaves, and tiny spiders strewn about the floors and I wondered who had set all this up, how long ago, and whether it was still being maintained.
At last Rijik and I reached the top of the palace, but there was only more mountain and no clear way over to the other side. Climbing down to the roof, I saw an old woman. I realized she had been the one narrating the story. "Quickly, through here!" She said, revealing a hole in the rock covered by a curtain of vines. "They've already opened a wormhole to get to you." Great, wormholes? I thought, Now they'll be able to get to us just by knowing where to look and we won't be able to simply outrun them. So much for putting as much distance as possible between us. "There is one location that's safe from them," The old woman continued, "But the only way to get there is via a specific bus. There's a bus stop right down there." She pointed. "The next bus leaves in 3 hours."
I lay flat on my stomach and rolled through the hole in the wall, barely able to fit. I lost my grip and fell but luckily the drop wasn't far on this side of the palace wall. I could actually see the wormhole nearby (kind of like the ones from Stargate but without the gate) and I hoped I hadn't been seen already. Rijik must have found a way over the wall because I saw him fly past. The bus stop was tiny, and there was nothing at all next to it except for a little bush. Three hours waiting at a bus stop with the bad guys here any second? How can this work? I considered taking Rijik off in a random direction to kill some time and try to shake the tail, then circling back in time to catch the bus, but then I decided it would only increase our chances of being seen. We'd have to find a place to hide, much as I disliked the idea. I crouched behind the bush and started digging with my hands in the dirt, hoping to find a secret passageway or something. It seemed unlikely so I gave up shortly after.
I scanned my surroundings for other options. The coast looked clear, so I entered a random dark garage, as one does. A small metal case was sitting on the floor. Intel! I thought, and scooped up the case with delight. Suddenly light shone in from an opened door and two men in suits walked in. They looked kind of like Yakuza. "Hunters are so stupid." One of them said, laughing. "They're so good at picking up our little 'gifts' but not so good at finding anything of actual value." I'd be offended, but he's kind of right. We never questioned the conveniently located cases of intel. Darn.
Looking past the Yakuza guys I saw that Rijik had been captured. He was being forced to battle a red dragon in an outdoor arena. I assumed other dragons were in the area as well. The Night King must have brought them all here. I started hatching a plot to try to break them free and escape again, myself, in the process. Of course, my options were limited at the moment. Perhaps I could get close to the arena and convince Rijik to turn on the Night King despite the magic bond and then help free the other dragons? Rijik knew me a little now, after all, and the Night King had been abusive. I didn't know enough about dragons to know if that even had a chance of working, but it was my best shot. Unfortunately I woke up before I could try saving the dragons.